Birds. 0fil3 



men would ejaculate with piety, "God be betune us and harm," 

 I was sharpening a gaft with a file by the dim light of a candle in a 

 lantern, when a cry so fearfully prolonged caused the men to rest on 

 their oars and devoutly cross themselves, praying the " blessed Virgin" 

 to protect them. Though I know not fear of supernatural tilings, yet 

 this fearful cry and the situation I was in made my hair he\ as if 

 bristling, and I was not sorry when a curlew broke the silence by his 

 cheerful \Vhistle. " Oh, Mister Harry ! wasn't that a fearful scrach !" 

 said the oldest man, a man of eighty : " I never heard such another but 

 wonst, and that was when I fislied with anld Bill, who's dead now, 

 God rest his sowl in glory ! and it bides us no good, for after hearing 

 that scrach, ten years ago, we lost all our lines and as fine a yawl as 

 ever sot the water, and be the same token poor Bill died a month 

 after." However, no ill luck followed ; we had a splendid haul of 

 congers, and a rattling easterly gale next day. When raising cod- 

 lines in the foggy November morning, hearing the call-note of this 

 bird is most pleasing, and well repays the naturalist his trouble in 

 rising at four and five o'clock, for we shoot our cod-lines six and seven 

 miles from Dalkey. 



Flight of the Colymhi. — Both these species are very strong when 

 once well on the wing, though on rising from the water they propel 

 themselves along the surface by both wings and feet for a considerable 

 distance. When hard pressed iu winter they will sometimes fly, but 

 in spring they take flight immediately on the approach of a boat. 

 Like the shag, if fired at with a bidlet, they will drop from the air as 

 if shot. Their ordinary flight is just above the surface, but in bad 

 weather they fly at various heights, always solitary. 



Food of the Colymhi— T\\c food of the northern diver is chiefly flat 

 fish, herrings and cobblers (father lashers). Of the redthroated diver, 

 flat-fish, herrings and cole-fish (pollock), the herring, 1 should say, 

 was its staple food : great numbers of divers are taken in the nets. 

 To catch flat-fish these divers have to turn on their backs in the 

 water and thrust the upper mandible under the sand, and thus catch 

 them ; hence the way the top of the upper mandible is worn. Tiiis may 

 seem a strange statement, but yet I have had ocular proof of it. The 

 sand-dab lies so closely on the bottom, on the approach of danger, 

 even burying itself partly in the sand, that the bird could hardly take 

 it any other way. If the bird was used to plough up the sand, as 

 Dr. Edmondston states, would it not be more worn than it is, and 

 would not the under mandible and the feathers at the base also suflfer ? 

 The following incident happened to myself two years ago in October: 



